Social Media Vocabulary: Lessons from the Current Language of Social Media

The English language has experienced its greatest growth over the past twenty years, thanks to the introduction of computers into our daily lives. The first decade of the 21st century will be well known for the exponential growth of the Internet and its impact on our language.

Just in recent years, social media has transformed the way we communicate. I thought it would be fun to bring up some of these terms here. My list features some of the less popular words that I think should get some credit for their creativity.

Anonoblog: A blog site of an anonymous author.

AstroTurf: A false grassroots impulse to promote a product, service, or idea.

Crowdsourcing: When an organization leverages the efforts and skills of those outside the organization to volunteer content.

Deciprocity: Saying or doing wrong things that results in a chronic decrease in friends and followers.

Dooced: Losing your job as a result of your blog. Coined by the author of the popular site, Dooce, who was fired after venting about her company.

Folksonomy: Collaborative tagging or social indexing. The collective use of tags to categorize content.

SOB: Outstanding and successful blogger (this definition is a great improvement over the original).

Social capital: The benefits to be gained from a positive reputation and strong relationships on social media.

Splog: Fake or spam blogs are often used solely for the purpose of linking and selling affiliates.

Vlog: Blog containing mainly video posts.